The Islamist Challenge

Islamist groups and organisations in the Arab world have long been waiting for the doors of power to burst open to them. If not complete rule or a share in rule, they at least expected to be able to practice their political activities freely, without fear of clampdowns, surveillance and deliberate marginalisation that befell them in recent decades.

Proponents of the Islamist hue of thought and political practice believe that they are more entitled to lead the nation than those who subscribe to any of the other political trends that surged across the Arab world over the past century. Although these movements may have swept into power on crests of overwhelming popularity, they nevertheless soon lost their initial dynamism and ultimately failed to deliver on the promise to steer the Arab peoples to sustained political revival and economic development.

Instead, these national revival movements fell into the grip of despotic rulers, grew ideologically divorced from reality and became mired in corruption benefiting primarily a narrow-vested interest elite.

The uphill battle of Arab liberals

In arguing that their time has come, the Islamists are implying that the time of Arab liberals has come and gone. Although Arab liberals dominated the anti-colonialist struggle with independence, they receded into the background as Arab nationalist and more radical left-wing ideologies took the fore.

Arab liberals today are fighting an uphill, if not impossible, battle to regain their erstwhile status and prestige.

Indeed, the fact that many are eyed with suspicion as forming a "fifth column" for the American "Greater Middle East" project, which is targeting Arabism both as a framework for a regional political order and as an expression of cultural identity, has made "neo-liberal" something of a dirty word.

As a result, people who would class themselves in this category are too busy defending their personal reputations and loyalty to their nations to devote themselves to the tasks of winning people over to their views and recruiting members for their fragile political parties.

"Islam is the solution"

At the same time, traditional liberals are losing more and more ground by the day, secluded in their ivory tower discourse and incapable of competing with the appeal and organisational abilities of both Arab-nationalist and Islamist trends.

The Islamists hold that the Arab nationalist movement's time is also up, because it proved unable to safeguard the important gains it had won in the period preceding and following national liberation.

To many Islamists, a right to prove that they can succeed where other political movements and ideologies have failed is not just theirs by default. As their rhetoric – "Islam is the solution" – epitomises, to them their right is not just political but in many ways an almost divine imperative, as suggested in the indoctrination of younger members and a spate of writings from Sayed Qotb through Mohamed Qotb and Anwar Al-Guindi.

"Resistance credentials"

Islamist groups rest their increasingly strident promotional campaign across the Arab world upon several points. They cite, above all, their "resistance credentials". It is Islamic groups, they say, that have taken up the banner of resistance against the Israeli occupation in Palestine, Lebanon and the Golan Heights and the American occupation in Iraq.

Moreover, beneath the Al-Qaeda umbrella, these elements have taken the struggle to the enemy camp. Terrorist operations abroad have forced the West onto the defensive and, to some Islamist factions, mark a bold stride forward in thwarting Western designs to fragment the region, in liberating Arab and Muslim lands and in reviving the region's prestige and glory.

The confidence of "moderate" Islamists

They also point to the increasingly widespread confidence "moderate" Islamists are winning among the Arab public, testimony to which are their parliamentary and municipal electoral victories in recent years in, for example, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Elsewhere in the Arab world, whether in underground activity or by legitimate channels, Islamists are also gathering popular support.

In Syria, for example, the Muslim Brothers are regarded as the strongest popular opposition force and, hence, the one most likely to ascend to power in the event of the fall of the regime.

Islamists have also been able to win a considerable degree of sympathy by projecting themselves as victims of political and, sometimes, religious persecution, a claim they can easily substantiate with reference to their climbing numbers in international reports monitoring human rights violations and religious persecution in the Arab world.

Rightful heirs to power?

They go on to argue that since they are paying the heaviest price in the struggle against tyrannical and totalitarian regimes, they are the rightful heirs to power following these regimes' demise.

Some Islamists have, at best, a very narrow view of democracy and democratic methods. While they may profess to subscribe to democratic methods and rule, this appeal is inconsistent with their belief that they are the culmination of the train of modern Arab political experiences.

Indeed, this very belief does little to reassure people that politicised Islamic organisations and groups have truly come to believe in political plurality and the principle of the rotation of power. Adding weight to such suspicions is the fact that an influential segment of the Islamist movement is openly opposed to democratic processes, as is borne out by a large portion of fundamentalist literature in the Arab world.

We recall, too, that Al-Qaeda's number two leader, Ayman El-Zawahiri, criticised the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt for taking part in the recent parliamentary elections.

Interacting constructively with the outside world

That the Islamists currently form the most vocal and dynamic opposition force, and that they have built up a large and widespread base of popular support, cannot be denied. Nor can we deny the legitimacy of their desire to promote the welfare of the people and to obtain the official recognition and legal license to better be able to do so, especially in view of how powerfully they have asserted themselves as a national movement.

Nonetheless, if they truly seek to contribute to the progress of the nation and spare it yet another catastrophe, they must radically change their political outlook. They must restrain their impatience to attain power by any means, they must demonstrate the sincerity of their belief in the right of other political beliefs and movements to continue to exist and work, and they must develop the ability to interact constructively with the outside world.

Above all, they must come up with a thoroughly studied concrete programme for lifting the Arab world from its current state of decay and fragmentation and they must ensure that their rise to power does not simply change the façade of all too familiar structures of political and social oppression.

Ammar Ali Hassan

© Al-Ahram Weekly 2006

The writer is director of Cairo's Centre for Middle East Studies and Research.

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